User Created Maps

[Russia4Life]

I haven't made anything in a while but I liked this map, so I figured I'd share. It is the largest the editor would allow me to make (256x256) so if you are not into gigantic maps it probably will not interest you. I made all of the terrain myself, Only using the generation function to place fungus and pods/resources. File was to large to upload so I had to compress it in .rar format.

I am looking for any thoughts on this map (tell me if you like it or think it is the worst piece of garbage you have seen on the forum, any feedback is welcome). I am also looking to find any other created maps from other players. I am really not that interested in scenarios just maps. I gave the downloads section of the forum a look over but there was a very limited selection there and not many there caught my eye as interesting.

On a side note, I have read in multiple threads that people have had the editor freeze/crash on them while using it, and that you are supposed to save frequently. Well, I experienced 0 problems over the couple of days I spent on this. I even went a stretch 2 days ago of 3 1/2 hours straight of editing with out even a slow down in performance. Maybe I am just lucky

[gwillybj]

Nicely done
If you're interested, I uploaded three extra large SMAX maps, each 360x180.
They are here: map ax80409 360x180,
and here: SMAX map ax70209 360x180,
and here: SMAX map ax61031 360x180.
I have another finished (ax80921) and am completing another (ax90321). I'll upload both when done.

[Russia4Life]

Pretty nice, one thing that would irritate me though because of my playing style is the lack of being able to reach everywhere by boat. ax80409 isn't bad in that respect you can reach most areas of the large landmasses by ship. Or I guess I could set up a large network of airbases and use drop pods to get land and air units around. Will definitely force me to play differently than my normal style of using a massive aircraft carrier and troop transport fleet.

[Petek]

Nice map. However, it's dimensions are actually 256x256. One way to see this is to start a game with your map. Then open the scenario editor. The display in the lower part of the screen shows the true dimensions, 256x256 in the case. The coordinates shown in the individual tiles are misleading.

Anyway, here are some past threads that discuss large maps:

1. gwillybj explains how to create maps that are larger than 256x256:

http://www.apolyton.net/forums/showthread.php?threadid=88039

2. A discussion about the limits of starting games on mega-maps and how to work around it:

http://apolyton.net/forums/showthread.php?t=162022

(Note: In post #6 of this thread, I linked to a zip file that I said was 1024x1024. That was my error: the map is really "only" 1024x512.)

3. Gives a technique to get better starting locations for mega-maps:

http://apolyton.net/forums/showthread.php?t=178015

Petek

[Russia4Life]

Some of that info was helpful, most I knew already from trial and error. The editing of alphax.txt was especially useful though.

I have since reading this created a 2048x1024 map. I originally thought the editor had frozen when I tried generating a map, it was however working properly just the immense amount of data it was generating was causing a slow down. Even having a 2.2 GHz processor and 2GB Ram, on a slow generation it took around 7 minutes to generate all the terrain, fungus, and pods/resources. The Map file was... get ready for this... 88.0MB

It will not load when creating a single player game, but saving it as a scenario works. I set it up like a normal game would be 2 colony pods 1 scout patrol. A few factions didn't like where I put them I guess because they wandered around for 5 turns and Miriam got picked off by mind worms during her wandering adventure. There is about a minute and a half wait between turns for me at the beggining of the game. I am interested what the limits are and I intend to push them. Perhaps the limit will be how long I am willing to wait between turns.

I messed with the editor area of aphax.txt I came up with some settings that work pretty well for extremely large maps such as this one. I attached alphax.txt and split the scenarios .rar file into small enough pieces that the site would allow me to post.

Continued below...

[Russia4Life]

Continued from above...

To unrar put all parts into the same folder right click on part one then click extract here. No need to do anything with the other parts except to have them in the same folder as part 1.

One thing that I always disliked about SMAC was the random map generation, after what I learned today I intend to find out how each one of the settings effects map generation and alter them to my liking. One thing I have already noticed is the default settings in alphax.txt are horrible for generating large maps. I might create a series of Alpha.txt files and store them in a folder. That way I can switch them in and out to suite what type of map I want to play at the given time and get better maps from generation.

[gwillybj]

Have you seen smacksim's detailed discussion of worldbuilder?
Improving the AI: Part I: The Worldbuilder section of alphax.txt

[Russia4Life]

I wish I had read that before I figured about 80% of that out on my own through 2 hours of testing stuff.

At least now I know what the land modifier lines do, since I was only testing one size of maps I would have never figured it out on my own.
I still have no idea what rainfall coefficient does.

I am making my files to specifically generate 256x256 maps. I already got a pretty good archipelago generating one, according to his post the AI will have an epic phail on that type of map though which kinda blows. But hey, it's not always about the AI what about me and my needs.
__________________________________________________ ___________


I will see if I can duplicate his results from huge planet type maps on a 256x256 map. The major problem is that 256x256 is not a natural progressive step from:
24, 48
32, 64
40, 80
44, 90
64, 128
256,256
The way the default sizes are setup there would be at least 3 more sizes in between 64,128 and 256,256, most likely there would be closer to 5. Rendering his file is basically useless for achieving the same result on a 256,256 map. If I do have some success it would probably be useless for generating smaller maps.

[gwillybj]

Pretty nice, one thing that would irritate me though because of my playing style is the lack of being able to reach everywhere by boat. ax80409 isn't bad in that respect you can reach most areas of the large landmasses by ship. Or I guess I could set up a large network of airbases and use drop pods to get land and air units around. Will definitely force me to play differently than my normal style of using a massive aircraft carrier and troop transport fleet.

Yes, I should have mentioned they are mostly land maps. I'm not a fan of the SMACX naval game, but I did try to make them circumnavigable and have a couple of decent-sized "oceans" - may have missed it on one or two maps. Mostly, though, the water areas are simply landmass separators of varying width.

[vyeh]

I downloaded RAR Expander (Mac OSX version) from http://rarexpander.sourceforge.net/.

I got the message that the archive could not be expanded, the file 'Morgan of the Morganites, 2100.SC' it contains seems to be broken.

Note that I use Mac OSX. Has someone with Windows managed to download and expand the 9 part RAR file successfully?

Edit: I think I found the problem. Originally, I used the right-click, Download Linked File as... to put the RAR files into a folder and got attachment.php.rar, attachment-1.php.rar, ..., attachment-8.php.rar. When I tried to expand those, I got the error message.

However, when I simply left clicked and the files downloaded to my desktop (my Safari default download location), I got the names listed and I was able to use the RAR expander without an error message.

[gwillybj]

The major problem is that 256x256 is not a natural progressive step from:
24, 48
32, 64
40, 80
44, 90
64, 128
256,256
The way the default sizes are setup there would be at least 3 more sizes in between 64,128 and 256,256, most likely there would be closer to 5. Rendering his file is basically useless for achieving the same result on a 256,256 map. If I do have some success it would probably be useless for generating smaller maps.

You probably already know you can work with that progression by adjusting the "Continent size ratios" if you want slightly larger landmasses on the big map. That line is one from the bottom of #WORLDBUILDER, just above #WORLDSIZE:

3,5,8,12,64,80 ; Ratio (Continent size ratios)
5 ; Islands (Higher # increases island count)

#WORLDSIZE
6
Tiny 48x40 planet, 48, 40
Small 64x52 planet, 64, 52
Standard 80x64 planet, 80, 64
Large 96x80 planet, 96, 80
Globe 360x180 planet, 360, 180
Giant 256x208 planet, 256, 208

This stuff is fun to fiddle with, finding out how to get just the right mix of land and sea.

[gwillybj]

I downloaded RAR Expander (Mac OSX version) from http://rarexpander.sourceforge.net/.
I got the message that the archive could not be expanded, the file 'Morgan of the Morganites, 2100.SC' it contains seems to be broken.
Note that I use Mac OSX. Has someone with Windows managed to download and expand the 9 part RAR file successfully?

Windows XP here. I successfully used ZIP Reader by PKWare. "ZIP Reader by PKWARE is a free program for extracting the files contained in ZIP archives and archives of various other types." The PKWare site says ZIP Reader is a Windows utility, apparently no Mac version.

[Russia4Life]

On the changes I've made: Keep in mind that many possible changes might improve the AI. Please post changes you found helpful.

Numbers in red are the original values, numbers in black are the new values. Don't copy-paste this for applying the changes! I'll attach a 'clean copy' at the bottom.

[SIZE=2]
#WORLDBUILDER
384, ; Land base        (Seeded land size of a standard world)
[COLOR=red]256, [/COLOR] 100, ; Land modifier    (additional land from LAND selection: x0, x1, x2)
[COLOR=red]12, [/COLOR] 48,  ; Continent base   (Base size of a land mass seed)
24,  ; Continent modif. (Increased size from LAND selection: x0, x1, x2)
[COLOR=red]1, [/COLOR] 5,   ; Hills base       (Base # of extra hills)
2,   ; Hills modifier   (additional hills from TIDAL selection: x0, x1, x2)
[COLOR=red]4, [/COLOR] 3,   ; Plateau base     (Basic plateau size)
[COLOR=red]8, [/COLOR] 4,   ; Plateau modifier (Plateau modifier based on LAND selection: x0, x1, x2)
[COLOR=red]8, [/COLOR] 12,  ; Rivers base      (Basic # of rivers)
12,  ; Rivers rain mod. (Additional rivers based on RAIN selection)
14,  ; Solar Energy     (Latitude DIVISOR for temperature based on HEAT) Smaller # increases effect of HEAT selection
14,  ; Thermal band     (Latitude DIVISOR for thermal banding)  Smaller # widens hot bands
8,   ; Thermal deviance (Latitude DIVISOR for thermal deviance) Smaller # increases randomness
8,   ; Global Warming   (Latitude DIVISOR for global warming)   Smaller # increases effect of warming
5,   ; Sea Level Rises  (Magnitude of sea level changes from ice cap melting/freezing)
5,   ; Cloudmass peaks  (Size of cloud mass trapped by peaks)
3,   ; Cloudmass hills  (Size of cloud mass trapped by hills)
1,   ; Rainfall coeff.  (Multiplier for rainfall belts)
[COLOR=red]15, [/COLOR] 1,  ; Deep water       (Encourages fractal to grow deep water)
[COLOR=red]10, [/COLOR] 5,  ; Shelf            (Encourages fractal to grow shelf)
[COLOR=red]15, [/COLOR] 10,  ; Plains           (Encourages highland plains)
[COLOR=red]10, [/COLOR] 2,  ; Beach            (Encourages wider beaches)
[COLOR=red]10, [/COLOR] 2,  ; Hills            (Encourages hills x TIDAL selection)
[COLOR=red]25, [/COLOR] 35,  ; Peaks            (Encourages peaks)
1,   ; Fungus           (Fungus coefficient based on LIFE selection)
3,6,12,18,24 ; Ratio    (Continent size ratios)
5   ; Islands          (Higher # increases island count)

[/SIZE]

I'll attempt to explain line-by-line. Keep in mind that many of the changes work together to produce the desired results:

256, 100, ; Land modifier (additional land from LAND selection: x0, x1, x2)
This is the amount of extra land per size above a standard world. The smaller this number, the more important your other settings become, because extra land is sort of uncontrollable, whereas adding land via extra peaks or hills is more quantifiable and predictable. However, you do want to add some land based on world size, or super-gigantic worlds will be mostly ocean no matter what.

12, 48, ; Continent base (Base size of a land mass seed) I'm not as clear on this. but it seems vaguely to do what it vaguely says, that is, make each continent a certain size initially, then tack on extras like plateaus, extra land, hills, etc.. Further testing needed.

1, 5, ; Hills base (Base # of extra hills)
2, ; Hills modifier (additional hills from TIDAL selection: x0, x1, x2)
These two things have a huge impact on your map. Each extra hill is multiplied extensively on a huge map, not just 5X2. More like (5 x number of continents generated). The tidal selection (percent water) is a nice bonus that allows further refinement of your generator. By lowering this number further you can keep the nuance between various settings even smaller if you know what you are looking for in a map. By increasing the modifier you make drastic changes between the tidal settings. This kind of modifier appears a few times in the worldbuilder. That's how it works.

Plateau Base + Modifier lines work just like the hills modifier. Adding more plateaus doesn't seem to add more land though. It adds to the # of plateaus on existing land, which rarely extends the continent into the sea like the Hills setting seems to do.

Rivers -> 12. I like rivers

15, 1, ; Deep water (Encourages fractal to grow deep water)
10, 5, ; Shelf (Encourages fractal to grow shelf)
Strangely, I had to lower both of these values to get the kinds of maps I wanted. Perhaps this is because these values are applied after generating the continents. They seem to eat away at existing landmasses, ruining all the things we've made before. This needs more research.

Plains seem similar to Plateaus. More research.

10, 2, ; Beach (Encourages wider beaches)
10, 2, ; Hills (Encourages hills x TIDAL selection)
25, 35, ; Peaks (Encourages peaks)
Beach. Try increasing this radically. It makes steep sloped beaches, not flat beaches. I think this is the most mis-named variable of the bunch. Thus, I reccomend you play with it last. Hills appear here as well, along with their big cousins, Peaks. It seems Peaks need Hills to grow upon, as you'll notice if you increase the Peaks value without correspondingly more Hills. This is where I add more land based on tidal selection, rather than via the land modifier (the 100 at the top). Thus, extra land is mostly in the form of rolling hills and peaks, which seems to do wonders for the AI, hides some landmarks a bit more, and causes the rivers to meander a bit more before dumping into the sea. Rivers speed up the AI as well as the player. Since the AI sometimes gets funny notions about travelling all over the map, this dampens the pain of that a tiny degree.

Basically the key is that the amount of land on a map is determined by many many factors put together, not just the top two. For instance, increasing hills increases the amount of land. Strangely, increasing peaks only increases the amount of land, if there are hills for it to 'work on' in making peaks. Also, encouraging shallows and deep water 'chew away' at the amount of land created.

So all in all, I found somewhat of a balance that creates just about as much land (a little more typically) as the original worldbuilder, but it:

Has fewer tiny islands
Has more shallows than deep water
Has a high likelihood of generating several medium continents instead of a massive one
Has few plateaus, but lots of peaks

-Smack

I have come to the conclusion that his idea is garbage, there are too many mountains and hills. When you start a random map the game only places 3 or 4 players. even using his file on a smaller map that happened in 4 out of 5 random games I started, and on the fifth I started on a 1 square island. It may be viable to create a game in scenario mode but not for a regular game.

[vyeh]

Windows XP here. I successfully used ZIP Reader by PKWare. "ZIP Reader by PKWARE is a free program for extracting the files contained in ZIP archives and archives of various other types." The PKWare site says ZIP Reader is a Windows utility, apparently no Mac version.

Thanks. I was able to download successfully when I left-clicked to download the files to my Safari default download destination rather than right-click to download them to a specific folder.

I did take a look at the scenario in the scenario editor. If you had maritime control center, a cruiser would have 8 movement points. To travel 1024 squares, it would take the cruiser 128 turns. Since this requires a change to the Worldbuilder section in alphax.txt and is not a custom map, I assume that there would be a major slowdown to the research rate because of the huge size of the map.

How long would it take to win by transcendence?

[Petek]

I have come to the conclusion that his idea is garbage, there are too many mountains and hills. When you start a random map the game only places 3 or 4 players. even using his file on a smaller map that happened in 4 out of 5 random games I started, and on the fifth I started on a 1 square island. It may be viable to create a game in scenario mode but not for a regular game.

You can improve starting locations on very large maps by starting a game, saving the map via the scenario editor, then starting a new game using the LOAD MAP FILE option.

These poor (or non-existent) starts occur in SMAX, but apparently not in SMAC. I speculate that the developers had to change the "starting location algorithm" for SMAX because three of the new factions don't land until MY 2105, or so. They had to somehow reserve reasonable starts for the latecomers, especially on tiny maps. However, the supposed change might have had unintended consequences for very large maps. For some reason, starting the game from a loaded map file improves the starting locations.

Petek